July 21, 2017: Michael Smith participated in the July 2017 Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property Summer Institute in a panel discussion on “Innovative and Creative IP Commercialization,” and gave a presentation titled “Anti-Piracy and Consumer Behavior: What We Know So Far.”

June 13, 2017: Our IDEA paper analyzing the impact of sVOD services on digital piracy has been accepted for publication at Management Science. In the paper, we use a randomized field experiment to analyze how known pirates respond when they are offered temporary free access to subscription video-on-demand services.

May 31, 2017: Our IDEA paper titled “Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Age: Empirical Evidence and Conclusions” has been accepted for publication in the George Mason Law Review. In the paper, we analyze the economic evidence of the impact of digital piracy on sales and of copyright enforcement on consumer behavior.

May 2, 2017: Michael Smith explained the cost of piracy and whether anti-piracy legislation has an effect on consumer behavior on an episode of NPR’s Marketplace Tech.

April 11, 2017: Our IDEA paper analyzing the impact of digitization on music concerts has been accepted for publication in Information Economics and Policy. In the paper, we show that the reduction in music sales caused by digitization and piracy has led to both an increase in the number of concerts artists perform and an increase in the geographical diversity of touring locations.

March 06, 2017: Michael Smith was featured in an article by Swedish news publication IDG about the negative effects that piracy, illegal downloads, and file-sharing has on the entertainment industry.

March 05, 2017: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang spoke to CBC Radio about how big data is increasing creative opportunities for the entertainment industry.

March 1, 2017: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang were featured in an article by The Shorthorn about how streaming platforms such as Netflix are significantly changing how entertainment is consumed.

February 20, 2017: Joshua Kim of Inside Higher Ed reviewed Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” with an emphasis on the question if what they argue in their book applies to professionals in higher education.

February 16, 2017: Rahul Telang contributed to an article featured by Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College on how big data and streaming video on demand (SVOD) channels are changing Hollywood.

February 8, 2017: Michael Smith gave a keynote address titled “Piracy and Film: 5 Myths and the Truth” at the 2017 Film & TV Näringsdagen in Stockholm.

February 6, 2017: Brett Danaher, Michael Smith, and Rahul Telang’s article was featured in Communications of the ACM. Their research concludes that the most effective response to piracy involves combined efforts from both rightsholders and governments.

February 5, 2017: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang discuss digital media distribution from their book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” on a podcast episode with MIT’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

February 1, 2017: Michael Smith gave a presentation titled “Big Data, Content Bubbles, and the Future of Entertainment” at the Redburn Media Conference in London.

January 30 2017: Michael Smith shared his insights on research he conducted with Seth Stephens and Hal Varian that shows movies that are advertised on the Super Bowl experience an increase in U.S. box office sales with Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College.

January 30, 2017: Michael Smith spoke to Raw Data about technological disruption in Hollywood driven by big data and how it creates a “perfect storm” of change and shift of power in the industry between companies like Amazon and traditional studio powerhouses.

January 26, 2017: Michael Smith’s paper with Seth Stephens and Hal Varian appeared in this month’s Quantitative Marketing and Economics Journal. In the paper they show that movies that are advertised on the Super Bowl experience about a $8.4 million increase in U.S. box office sales from a $3 million Super Bowl advertisement.

January 24, 2017: Michael Smith gave a presentation titled “Technology, Copyright, and the Creative Industry” at the Copyright and Technology Conference in New York.

January 6, 2017: Michael Smith gave a talk to Gary’s Book Club at the 2017 Consumer Technology Association Conference on technological disruption in the entertainment industries from his co-authored book with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

December 29, 2016: Rahul Telang discusses the book he co-authored with Michael Smith, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” and “where the industry is heading” on the Knowledge@Wharton show.

December 21, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang were featuring in an article by CTXT, Context and Action, about big data’s impact on television.

December 7, 2016: Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Scholarly Kitchen blog featured a review of Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

November 17, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” will be showcased at Consumer Technology Association’s event, Gary’s Book Club, on January 6, 2017.

November 13, 2016: Michael Smith gave a talk on the book he co-authored with with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” to Kory French of BTR Today.

November 12, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” received a review by Small Business Trends.

November 4,2016: Michael Smith was featured in an article by The Ringer on streaming services’ use of algorithms to market content to “exactly the right audience.”

November 1, 2016: Brett Danaher, Michael Smith, and Rahul Telang were featured in an article by The Register about their research on the effects of blocking piracy websites in the UK in November 2014 on consumer behavior.

October 19, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang were featured in an article by Forbes about their research of Netflix’s data-driven business model from their book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

October 18, 2016: Michael Smith gave a keynote address titled “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” at the Hollywood IT Society Fall Conference in Los Angeles.

October 11, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang spoke to Talks at Google about how big data is changing power in the entertainment industry from their co-authored book, “Streaming Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

October 6, 2016: Rahul Telang spoke to Dr. Alvin, owner of The Paradise Radio Network about big data from the book he co-authored with Michael Smith, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 30, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang will speak at Live Talks Business Forums on October 20th 2016 on their co-authored book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 29, 2016: Rahul Telang spoke to Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School about the book he co-authored with Michael Smith, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment”.

September 22, 2016: Michael Smith was featured in an article by The Wall Street Journal about his study of delaying international DVD released after domestic debuts and reducing foreign sales.

September 21, 2016: Rahul Telang was featured in an article by Bloomberg Businessweek about Spotify perfecting playlists and attracting listeners with the Discover Weekly feature.

September 20, 2016: Rahul Telang spoke to C-SPAN “about how data collection has affected the book, movie, music and television industries” from the book he co-authored with Michael Smith, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 19, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by Fortune about the book he co-authored with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 16, 2016: Michael Smith was featured in an article by Fortune titled, “Netflix Could Win Big at the 2016 Emmys” about Netflix’s notable contribution in creating content for entertainment.

September 15, 2016: Rahul Telang was interviewed by Texas Public Radio about the changes in how entertainment is consumed and how big data plays a role.

September 15, 2016: An excerpt from Chapter 11 of Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” was featured on the Digital Cinema Report website.

September 14, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” was reviewed by Copyright and Technology.

September 14, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by Yahoo! Finance about how big data is disrupting Hollywood’s entertainment industry.

September 14, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by TheStreet TV’s Gregg Greenburg about big data transforming the entertainment industry from his co-authored book with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 13, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by Digital Cinema Report about data challenges Hollywood studios are facing, and the book he co-authored with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 11, 2016: The Financial Times published a review of Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s co-authored book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 8, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang were interviewed by Breakthrough Radio about data-driven marketing and their co-authored book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 7, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show about the book he co-authored with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future Entertainment.”

September 6, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by Business News Network about big data and how it is reshaping the entertainment industry.

September 6, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by Nasdaq Reads on Facebook Live about the book he co-authored with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

September 6, 2016: Michael Smith discussed the book he co-authored with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” on The Bloomberg Advantage.

September 5, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s book, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment” was featured in an article titled “If You Want to Run an Entertainment Company, Here is Your New Bible” on the Cultural Weekly Website.

August 26, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang were interviewed on The Digital Show about how big data is changing the entertainment industry.

August 26, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang wrote a column for Publisher’s Weekly about how major publishers can use big data and bundling strategies to take control of the future of their industry.

August 1, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed on NPR Marketplace Tech about his upcoming book with Rahul Telang, “Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment.”

July 22, 2016: Michael Smith was interviewed by NPR Marketplace about the effectiveness of anti-piracy strategies.

June 21, 2016: IDEA research on two broad strategies for encouraging consumers to shift from pirated content to legal content: making legal content more easily available and making pirated content more costly to consumers was featured on the Technology Policy Institute blog.

May 26, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang have a new research paper analyzing the impact of delayed international windows on DVD sales. Our results suggest that an additional 10-day delay between the availability of digital piracy and the legitimate DVD release date in a particular country is correlated with a 2-3% reduction in DVD sales in that country. Our results highlight how digital networks have increased the interconnection between geographically dispersed markets and suggest a continued need for studios to revisit established marketing practices given the widespread availability of pirated content.

May 11, 2016: The Australian Business Review covered IDEA research studying whether UK blocking was effective in driving the adoption of legal channels. As the article notes, our research in the UK found that when a sufficient number of sites are blocked, and when legal digital services are available, that blocking piracy websites can be effective at moving consumers from piracy to legal consumption.

May 10, 2016: IDEA research analyzing the effectiveness of site blocking efforts in the UK was featured in an article by Forbes. The research suggests that the blocking of 53 piracy websites in the UK in November 2014 caused a 90% drop in visits to the blocked sites while causing no increase in usage of unblocked sites. This led to a 22% decrease in total piracy for all users affected by the blocks.

May 5, 2016: Michael Smith gave a talk on website blocking research at Harvard Business School’s Digital Initiative Discussion & Symposium. The research studied how consumer behavior changes when Internet Service Providers are required to block access to major piracy websites. The results suggest that website blocking requires persistent blocking of a number of piracy sites in order to effectively migrate pirates to legal channels, and that the increased availability of legal digital services can make antipiracy efforts more effective.

April 25, 2016: Michael Smith and Rahul Telang’s entry titled “Piracy Myths Debunked” was featured on the CreativeFuture blog. The entry summarizes three key studies than can serve to “bust” some of the biggest myths about piracy.

April 20, 2016: Michael Smith gave a keynote presentation titled “Customer Data and the Future of Entertainment” at the 2016 Cable Academy conference.

April 12, 2016: Gale Anne Hurd, Producer of The Walking Dead, mentioned IDEA research in an editorial on USA Today. The original research decomposes the two hypothesized effects, and shows that the negative effects from piracy due to cannibalization dwarf any positive, promotional benefits.

February 24, 2016: Michael Smith, along with Alan Montgomery and Liye Ma, released a new study titled “The Dual Impact of Movie Piracy on Box-Office Revenue: Cannibalization and Promotion,” and authored a post about their research on the Technology Policy Institute Blog. This paper decomposes the two hypothesized effects, and shows that the negative effects from piracy due to cannibalization dwarf any positive, promotional benefits. The findings of their study were also featured by Variety.

February 2, 2016: Michael Smith gave a research seminar at the New York University’s Stern School titled “Do Search Engines’ Results Influence Media Piracy?”

January 25, 2016: CMU’s homepage featured a story on Rahul Telang and Michael Smith’s book coming out with MIT Press in September.

January 25, 2016: Michael Smith was selected to be the Exclusive Data Keynote Speaker at the Sundance Film Festival’s Artist Services Workshop. Smith presented on piracy within the business of movie making and its impact on independent filmmakers.

January 5, 2016: IDEA research was referenced in Tech Times’ article to support the mythology of digital piracy. The research results suggest that increased consumer awareness of HADOPI caused iTunes song and album sales to increase by 22.5% and 25% respectively relative to changes in the control group.

January 3, 2015: IDEA research was included in the National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute, Industrial Organization Workshop in Massachusetts. This study finds that on average, movies in this study experienced incremental opening weekend ticket sales of about $8.4 million from a $3 million Super Bowl advertisement.

December 31, 2015: IDEA research was included in the International Business Times. In the article, Brett Danaher cites the effectiveness of blocking various illegal download sites simultaneously to maximize the reduction of piracy.

December 4, 2015: IDEA research of piracy’s financial impact on movies was featured in Forbes’ article titled “How Piracy Is Still Hurting the Filmmakers And Artists You Admire.” The research illustrates that pre-release piracy causes a 19% decrease in box office revenue.

November 30, 2015: Michael Smith was featured on the C-SPAN rebroadcast of the panel, “Creative Destruction in the Creative Industries: How Technology is Changing Content Business Models,” which was part of the Technology Policy Institute Aspen Forum held August 16-18, 2015.

November 25, 2015: Brett Danaher presented a paper co-authored with Rahul Telang and Michael Smith at the World Intellectual Property Organization Advisory Committee on Enforcement in Geneva, Switzerland. The paper titled “Copyright Enforcement in the Digital Age: Empirical Economic Evidence and Conclusions” investigates economic effectiveness of various anti-piracy interventions and firm strategies within the government.

November 6, 2015: Michael Smith gave a talk titled “Carrots and Sticks: Empirical Evidence on Strategies for Competing with Piracy” at the University of Arizona Eller College of Management’s MIS Speaker’s Series.

August 12, 2015: Michael Smith, along with Peter Boatwright and Patrick Choi, released a new study titled “The Perfect Storm: Using Snowstorms to Analyze the Effect of Theatrical Attendance on the Demand for Subsequently Released DVDs,” and blogged about the research on the Technology Policy Institute Blog. The paper examines how consumption in a movie’s theatrical channel affects demand in the subsequent DVD retail channel.

August 5, 2015: The results from IDEA research were included by Forbes in their article titled “There’s Hope To Combat Piracy If Hollywood, Industry, and Government Unite.” The results show blocking one site (The Pirate Bay) only caused a small reduction in total piracy—still allowing consumers to turn to other piracy sites.

June 10, 2015: Wired UK covered the impact of singular piracy site bans versus the effectiveness of bans on larger numbers of sites in a short period of time. Featured in the article were the findings from IDEA research titled “The Effect of Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Behavior.”

June 3, 2015: Brett Danaher, Michael Smith, and Rahul Telang released a study titled “The Effect of Piracy Website Blocking on Consumer Behavior,” and authored a post about their findings on the Technology Policy Institute Blog. The analysis found blocking many sites can increase the cost of finding alternate sources of piracy enough that a significant number of former pirates will switch their behavior toward legal sources.

December 19, 2014: IDEA research that piracy elimination from the theatrical window would increase box office revenue by 16% or $1.3 billion per year was presented at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics, Auckland, New Zealand.

December 1, 2014: Michael Smith spoke on 89.3 KPCC’s The Frame in an episode titled “Sony’s security breach; Reese Witherspoon on women in Hollywood.” Smith shared that “when a movie is available on piracy before the movie release in theatres, that is correlated with about a 20% decrease in theatrical revenue.”

September 19, 2014: The paper titled “Do Search Engines Influence Media Piracy?” was covered in Music Technology Policy. The results from the study show that consumers choose legal options for acquiring movies when legal sites are promoted, and piracy options when piracy links are promoted. The paper was also included by the National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute, Economics of IT and Digitization Workshop.

September 16, 2014:TorrentFreak featured IDEA research results in the article titled “Search Engines Can Diminish Online Piracy, Research Finds.” The results show that search engines play an important role in the fight against intellectual property theft.

July 30, 2014: Michael Smith’s post on the Technology Policy Institute Blog, “The Expendables 3 Leak and the Financial Impact of Pre-Release Piracy,” was covered by Copyhype. The results suggest that pre-release piracy reduces box office revenue by 19% compared to piracy solely available after the theatrical release.

May 19, 2014: IDEA research titled “The Effect of Pre-Release Movie Piracy on Box Office Revenue” was accepted for publication at Information Systems Research. The paper analyzes the impact of pre-release piracy on box office revenue, finding that pre-release movie piracy reduces box office revenue by 20% relative to piracy that is delayed until after release.

April 28, 2014: Michael Smith was a panelist at a Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus panel titled “Education, Enforcement, and the Economics of Piracy and Counterfeiting.”

April 3, 2014: IDEA research titled titled “Information Discovery and the Long Tail of Motion Picture Content” was accepted at MIS Quarterly. The paper empirically shows that information discovery in pay cable broadcast windows allows consumers to discovery movies they didn’t discover in the theatrical window and shifts consumption toward “long tail” titles and away from blockbusters.

February 27, 2014: IDEA research titled “Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales” will be presented at the Winter Conference on Business Intelligence in Snowbird, Utah.

February 10, 2014: IDEA’s Megaupload research appeared in the March issue of the International Journal of Industrial Organization. The paper shows that shutting down Megaupload caused an increase in digital movie sales of between 6.5-8.5% over the 18 weeks following the shutdown in the 12 countries in our dataset.

January 15, 2014: IDEA research analyzing the impact of digital music bundling strategies was accepted for publication in Management Science’s special issue on Business Analytics. The paper analyzes a unique natural experiment that allows us to understand both the price sensitivity of music sold online and the interaction between single and album pricing strategies. We find that record labels benefit from tiered pricing and that unbundling strategies (where singles are sold alongside albums) outperform album only strategies.

December 19, 2013: IDEA research titled “Pricing and Promotions in Digital Channels: Measuring Sales Response to Price Discounts and Promotional Placements” was presented at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE) in Milan, Italy.

December 10, 2013: IDEA research analyzing the academic literature on piracy will appear in a National Bureau of Economic Research book “Innovation Policy and the Economy.” The paper reviews the academic literature and finds that the vast majority of published academic papers find that piracy harms sales. The paper also discusses research showing that both market-based measures and legislative measures can be effective in reducing piracy and increasing legitimate sales.

November 16, 2013: IDEA published a new research paper discussing empirical strategies for analyzing the impact of digitization on media markets. This paper also illustrates one methodology in the context of ABC’s use of the Hulu for streaming its content. We show that ABC’s decision to stream its content on Hulu caused a decrease in the demand for ABC piracy relative to NBC, CBS, and FOX content, and may have had a spillover effect that reduced the demand for piracy from those networks. The paper will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming National Bureau of Economic Research book “Economics of Digitization: An Agenda.”

August 25, 2013: IDEA’s Megaupload research study was referenced in the House of Representatives 2014 Appropriations Report.

July 30, 2013: IDEA research titled “Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales” was presented at the The Third Annual Research Roundtable on The Law and Economics of Digital Markets in Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL.

July 29, 2013: Brett Danaher presented IDEA’s Megaupload shutdown paper at the Searle Center’s 3rd Annual Research Roundtable on the Law and Economics of Digital Markets at Northwestern University.

July 19, 2013: IDEA research titled “Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales” was presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

July 18, 2013: Pedro Ferreira presented IDEA research titled “The Impact of Popularity on Sales of Movies in Video-on-Demand: a Randomized Experiment” at The National Bureau of Economic Research Economics of Digitization Workshop in Stanford, California. This paper analyzes how “likes” affect movie sales by conducting an experiment with a major cable company’s Video-On-Demand service to manipulate the number of likes shown to consumers. We find that search costs, rank and number of likes are significant determinants of sales. For search costs, our experiments show that movies sell 3 times more on average when they are shown on the first screen of the VOD system than when the same movie is shown in lower screens.

June 27, 2013: IDEA research titled “The Impact of Popularity on Sales of Movies in Video-on-Demand: a Randomized Experiment” was presented at the Ninth Symposium on Statistical Challenges in Electronic Commerce Research (SCECR) in Lisbon, Portugal.

May 17, 2013: Rahul Telang participated in the Future of Copyright’s First Sale Doctrine workshop at Columbia University.

April 23, 2013: Brett Danaher, Michael Smith, and Rahul Telang will present the results of their anti-piracy research at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Innovation Policy and the Economy conference.

April 5, 2013: IDEA’s anti-piracy research was covered in an article on page A2 of the Wall Street Journal discussing the impact of piracy on sales, and in a follow-up WSJ blog post.

March 7, 2013: Michael Smith and Brett Danaher’s paper analyzing the impact of the Megaupload shutdown was posted to SSRN.com. The paper was covered by a variety of press outlets including the Wall Street Journal,

February 1, 2013: Brett Danaher, Michael Smith, Rahul Telang, and Siwen Chen’s paper on the impact of France’s HADOPI “3 strikes” anti-piracy law was accepted for publication in the Journal of Industrial Economics. The research finds that HADOPI caused a 22.5% increase in song sales and a 25% increase in album sales relative to sales in a control group of countries. We also find that the impact of HADOPI occurred primarily during the time period when the law was being discussed in the French press (and searched for by French citizens on the Internet), a period before the law was enacted and well before any notices were sent to individuals caught violating the law. Finally, we show that our results are robust to controlling for penetration of iOS devices.

January 15, 2013: Michael Smith gave a presentation at the Digital Book World conference titled “Competing With Free: How Piracy Impacts Sales and Strategies to Fight It.” The presentation was picked up by several outlets including Publisher’s Weekly and the Copyright and Technology blog.

December 15, 2012: Brett Danaher presented his paper with Michael Smith “Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales” at the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE) in Orlando, Florida.

October 12, 2012: Michael Smith presented “An Empirical Analysis of Digital Music Bundling Strategies” (joint with Brett Danaher, Yan Haung and Rahul Telang) to The Second Annual Research Roundtable on The Law and Economics of Digital Markets, Searle Center on Law Regulation and Economic Growth, Northwestern University School of Law, Chicago, IL.

September 21, 2012: Dow Jones SmartMoney covered Rahul Telang and Michael Smith’s research into the potential impact of making the world’s out-of-print books available in digital form. The study showed that making out-of-print books available could generate at least $860 million in consumer surplus in the first year, and $460 million in profit to authors and publishers.

September 20, 2012: Rahul Telang and Michael Smith have a short paper titled “Why Digital Media Requires a Strategic Rethink” in the October Harvard Business Review. The paper provides a strategic summary of Smith and Telang’s media research focusing on three main points: Delaying digital availability doesn’t increase physical sales, shorter international release windows increase international sales, and anti-piracy regulations can help increase sales in legitimate channels.

September 13, 2012: Michael Smith posted a commentary to Digitopoly.org titled “Does Piracy Harm Sales?” The commentary reviews findings of a review of the academic literature, co-authored with Rahul Telang. Their review of the literature suggests that the vast majority of papers in the academic literature, particularly those published in top peer-reviewed academic journals, find that piracy harms sales in legitimate channels.

September 13, 2012: Michael Smith was a panelist in a session on “Comparing International Anti-Piracy Strategies” at National Association of Recording Merchandisers, Entertainment & Technology Law Conference Series in New York. His comments were covered in an article on paidContent.org.

August 20, 2012: Michael Smith was a panelist in a session on “Copyright and Piracy after SOPA/PIPA: Finding Common Ground” at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum in Aspen, Colorado.

August 20, 2012: Michael Smith posted a commentary to Digitopoly.org titled “Anti-Piracy Regulation and Competing with Free.” The commentary criticizes the conclusions in Nick Bilton’s New York Times editorial “Internet Pirates Will Always Win.” Specifically, the commentary argues that the academic literature suggests that anti-piracy regulation can increase media sales in legitimate channels, and that “competing with free” piracy is just a special case of price competition where media companies can differentiate both their own products (by using convenient, reliable, reasonably priced digital channels) and competing pirated products (through a variety of strategies, which might include anti-piracy regulation).